Miscellany
by MsCongeniality
Summary: MISCELLANY, a term applied to a single book containing articles, treatises or other writings dealing with a variety of different subjects."
1. Full Circle

A girl…no, a young woman, sat in a clearing seemingly lost in thought. She was still as a statue as the wind played with the hem of her kimono, picking up stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her low ponytail. Once the breeze died down, she unconsciously pushed the strands away from her face and briefly looked upwards, as though seeking answers in the sky.

Apparently finding nothing forthcoming, she closed her eyes and gave a bittersweet smile as she turned her attention towards the earth again. This was where it had all begun, where a child's fearless kindness had brought her to the kind of life they don't even talk about in stories. Well, not in the good kind of stories anyway.

Her second life hadn't been a bad one. It was not your typical existence to be sure, and it marked her as a thing apart. Having lived that life there was no other she could return to, and now that it was over she came to this place of beginnings and endings. She came to the remains of a village where she'd been born and she'd died, then been born again.

She came to the clearing in the woods.

This was where she now belonged, and she would have no third life.


	2. Fairy Tales

Once I believed in happy endings.

I believed in fairy tales...I _lived_ a fairy tale. I was the heroine and while the knight at my side didn't wear armor and wasn't pure of heart he was no less the hero for all of that.

Once I was a child.

Children grow up...I grew up and, I learned that the fairy tales hide darker metaphors and there are no happy endings. The hero doesn't always win and even if he does, he doesn't always get the girl.

Or rather, the girl doesn't always get him.

I hate fairy tales.


	3. Happy Birthday to Me

Birthdays are funny things. People have all kinds of different reactions to another year passing. Really, you're actually no older than you were the day before but for some reason the day itself is significant for most people even if they show it in different ways.

There are people who insist on announcing it to the world, they'll throw themselves big parties so they get all the birthday wishes they can. There are others who pretend that they weren't born at all, or at least not on any day in particular. Then there are the ones who use the day as an excuse for self indulgence of the worst sort. Actually, in some ways I am one of those people.

I usually spend my birthdays alone, it's the one time I really let myself mourn. Most days I go through my life and I've gotten pretty good at it. I have my moments, where I'll see or hear something that will bring me back and I think I'm going to just break down right there in public. I guess that's faded over the years, and for the most part I'm doing alright. I've got a job and an apartment I share with a friend from university - I even go out on dates occasionally. Most days I can convince myself that I'm normal, but not on my birthday.

It was on my birthday that I first learned that I wasn't your 'average, ordinary middle-schooler' and had a whole new life given to me. I treasure those memories now, even if I don't indulge in them too often. I got to live a fairy tale adventure with the knowledge that I was doing something that really mattered. I learned responsibility and began to understand relationships between people, the feelings of trust and family that bond true comrades and the love that can develop between friends. Then, years later, it was on that special day that I lost it all.

Our quest was over and we'd settled in to a semblance of a normal life. I don't think that any of us could really be considered your average person at that point - if we ever could have in the first place. Despite that, we found our places, and developed routines, and began the rest of our lives. There was no question that we'd stay with one another. After all we'd experienced together, we had become a family of a sort and for my friends it was the only family they had. I was the lucky one, I still had my family back home.

It was literally the best of both worlds. I got to spend time with both of my families, and the man I loved. I trained my innate spiritual abilities, and I learned a general curriculum. I had the wonders and resources that our modern world has brought at my fingertips and got to experience the natural beauty we sacrificed to get them. Such a perfect balance - it's no surprise that eventually it all fell apart.

On my next birthday, I returned and had dinner with my mother, brother and Jii-chan, just as I had every other year. When the time came for me to go back to my other home, the way was blocked. I could not return and I guess the other side was blocked as well because He never came and got me. I was cut off from that life, my love, and my family forever. As I've said, I've learned how to go on since then. It took me some time, but somehow I managed. Each year, I still return to my mother's home and each year I let myself remember.

This year, I'm here alone. Jii-chan has been gone for some time and last year Mama got sick. She was in remission, but things seem to have reversed themselves and she was admitted to the hospital yesterday. Souta is knee deep in final exams - he wasn't even able to come and visit Mama, though he'll be here next week. This year, it's just me, and the Shrine, and the well.

Even the sake I had to 'fortify my resolve' wasn't enough to give me the strength to visit the well this time. I tried, but I couldn't make it past the doors. Instead, I've come here to the Goshinboku to sit at its roots and look at the night sky through its branches. I guess I was trying to recapture the peace I once felt sitting under these same branches, looking up at that same sky but it's like catching smoke and I've just fallen into the same aching loss, the one I only acknowledge once a year.

Even now, I can feel Him. It's not just the presence of the Goshinboku, I can feel His calloused fingers brushing the hair away from my face. I can feel His arms wrap around me so he can carry me to the house - I can almost hear Him whispering my name. I know that in a moment I'll have to open my eyes, but for this instant I want to believe that what I'm feeling is real.


	4. Her Voice

She called to him.

She called, and he heard.

I watched as he turned to go, to leave me and return to her.

As much as we'd meant to each other, as much as we still meant to each other, I knew then that the moments I could steal with him would be just that - stolen, fleeting.

Despite the feel of his arms around me, and my lips against his; despite his pretty words, the ones meant to tell me how dear I am to his heart, there will always come the inevitable moment when he leaves me behind to return to his new life.

The life without me.

* * *

_Another short one from me, this is Kikyou's POV set just after the events of anime episode 23/manga chapter 77. _

_Thanks go out to Nabob and KaguratheWind for reading things through for me._

_Disclaimer - None of it's mine, hell the idea isn't even terribly original._


	5. One of Those Days

_Here's a piece of relatively un-beta-ed angst. Thehroda saw an early version of it and Kagurathewind gave a quick scan of this version. Special thanks go to the folks at Green Tea for catching my more blatant typos and grammatical errors._

_Enjoy!  
__Err...I guess... _

**

* * *

One of Those Days**

I woke up this morning; and before I even got out of bed, I knew it was going to be one of _those_ days. It would be a melancholy day, full of loss and what if. Sitting half dressed, I stared out the window, lost in the swaying motion of the leaves and yet not seeing them at all. It took a knock at the door and a gentle reminder to pull me back from that place inside me that wasn't. I resumed the motions of normal but inside was still the same empty.

One last look at the Goshinboku, taunting me even as it watched over, and my hollow shell fled down the great stone steps to where I could hide among the many. There but not. Ghosts haunted me, hiding in the crowds of commuters. There were glimpses - a man with a ponytail smiling at a girl or a flash of clear green glass in a store window, bright as eyes. Something, always at the edge of vision, that faded to the crowd if I tried to catch it.

At school I could lose myself in routine, notes taken without comprehension. Smile, nod and laugh in the right places. If my friends noticed that the girl they'd known was dead, they were too polite to mention it.

A few hours at my part-time. Smiling, lying, flattering through the tightness in my chest that came from a flash of white on red. I'm told it's therapeutic for me to be away from the shrine. I need to be busy, to not live in a fantasy dream and memory. It's therapeutic but it's not real, no more than the girl with the smile that doesn't reach my empty eyes.

Ghosts follow me home. I hear my name, I feel the tug of shattered purity made whole. I go where they lead me, to the place where I am lost. Someone will come with comforting, empty words. They'll find the girl curled among the splinters of wood in this dark, empty space. They always do, it's one of those days.


	6. Survivor

We sat alone together, taking company in each other's quiet presence. We didn't talk, not in words. We held hands, the fabric and beads rough and smooth against my skin. We looked at one another. Or not, it didn't matter with him beside me.

After that, I knew what was coming even if I couldn't say or admit it.

It was after that, he gave himself.

He had a choice, and he'd taken that dark path. Maybe it was nobility, maybe he knew it was ending.

Maybe he just wanted to go.

At that moment, he closed his eyes and a tension I'd never known was there left his face. At that moment, he was utterly at peace.

Peace that eludes me.


	7. Scar Tissue

It was inevitable, they always asked about the scar. Never the first time, but if the relationship went on long enough, and they got a chance, they'd ask.

Kagome frowned slightly, running her fingers lightly over the irregular starburst etched into the flesh just above her hip. It didn't even feel like any of her other scars, the long, linear memories of wounds running white against the warm tone of her skin. The jewel's mark on her body was different, and in many ways it ran so much deeper than the marks of battles that came in its wake.

She looked up again, catching her own, frank gaze in the mirror before her. Maybe it was precisely that, she mused to her reflection. That this one strange scar had led to so many others to so much pain. Not only the people she came to care for, but the poor individuals who had the misfortune to be caught in the maelstrom of events she'd so carelessly set in motion.

Regardless, it was the one scar that got asked about, and the one she was least able to explain. After all, how did you tell someone, even a lover, that you were once at the center of a legend? That somehow the fate of the future rested on your all too immature shoulders. How do you explain that small moment of pain that ultimately taught you strength, courage and, beyond all else, how to give love? The truth was unbelievable and the lies too inadequate.

Closing her eyes, Kagome let out a deep breath and reached for the hem of her loosely hanging robe. Cinching it tightly around her waist, she turned away from the mirror and back to her room and the one who'd asked. He'd taken her quiet redirection so easily, and in some ways that was disappointing. Maybe one day, though, there'd be someone she could tell the truth, or who knew the truth without having to be told. She smiled at the thought and returned to the one who waited in the meantime.


End file.
